How’s your year shaping up? Got stuff planned? Resolutions made? Just trying to get through the rest of winter?
I realized as I was looking for art for this week that while I worked on stuff, I don’t have a lot of pics of it to share. I was busy working on the VR project that, while important for the class, it really didn’t offer much of my own work to look at. The whole point was to optimize an already created application that was performing poorly. Think lag. 
Big time. That’s done and now I’m on to a production project. I’m not very far into it so I don’t have news on how that’s going to work out yet. Once that’s done then it’s on to the final project.
I took advantage of some of the early daylight over the weekend and worked on the Ovation painting. I’m still working on the second round of the crimson. I’m not near done with it. But I did finally get a good angled view of the painting when taking this photo of it so that it’s a little easier to see it in general.
I might have mentioned that I was adding some Yoga to my exercise regime. It’s in between/after the Taekwondo days. This week it bore the fruit I was hoping for. We did back kick practice on Saturday. Back kick practice usually results in my lower back complaining. So Yoga, on Sunday, helped that a lot and by the end, it was all stretched out and loosened up.
Of course there was also the guitar practice. I’m still working on my basic skills and trying to expand my knowledge of rhythms and techniques. That’s an on going thing I think. As long as you play there is always more to learn. And when you have as eclectic tastes as I do it’s very difficult to stay focused on one type of thing. So I’m working on my basic blues stuff as well as basic rhythm keeping. That entails a lot of work with a metronome. Click-click-click-click. I’ve also got some songs that I just really like that I’m working on. One with a really nice picking pattern that is proving to be a good challenge for me. And a couple of really nice finger-picking versions of some songs. I’m also working on the riff from “Stayin’ Alive” because, I like to have little bits to mess with while I’m waiting for others. It’s my version of being fidgety when I have a guitar in my hand.
Along with all that, I did find a song that I think I can handle the vocals for. So I’ve been working on that. It took a few days to get the chords down and a little longer than that to start to get a handle on the vocals. Words and melody. I’m still fine tuning the melody. I have a tendency to drop the ends of phrases. So I go lower even if it should go higher. That’s something for me to work on. Since I don’t have a lot of ready feedback for how things are sounding I’ve taken to using my phone to record myself so I can listen to the play back. This is a weird thing to get over. Hearing your own voice outside of your head. It has turned out to be helpful so I’ll be continuing to make use of that, even as awkward as I feel doing it.
And that’s my week past. Not too much to share. Just hard at work at things. The next week up has me working on the VR class to get the next project done so I can get started on the last part. I’ll likely take advantage of some early light again and work on the Ovation painting more. I’ll also be practicing music more. The next Blues Jam is all set for this Sunday. Which means, working on the song to sing as well as anything else I thought I wanted to learn to play for that. I’m excited to get to go out an play again. It’s always a lot of fun.
As I finish up the VR class and the last of those projects, I’ll start thinking about the what next stuff. I’m suspicious that if I start looking too far into that at the moment that I’ll get too impatient to get started on those things and not finish some of what I’m currently working on. So, I don’t have much to tell for the what’s coming up, at least not for sure. But I’ll try to get more pictures of the painting and maybe even the Jam. Oh! And pictures of the last VR project when I get going on that.